they often
gain by appearing in a modern dress. Their versification, which
doubtless had its charm when listened to around the hearth of an ancient
castle, is very languid and prosaic, and suitable enough to the tedious
prolixity into which the narrative is apt to fall; and though we find
many sallies of that arch and sprightly simplicity which characterizes
the old language of France as well as England, it requires, upon the
whole, a factitious taste to relish these Norman tales, considered as
poetry in the higher sense of the word, distinguished from metrical
fiction.

[Sidenote: Roman de la Rose.]

A manner very different from that of the fabliaux was adopted, in the
Roman de la Rose, begun by William de Loris about 1250, and completed by
John de Meun half a century later. This poem, which contains about
16,000 lines in the usual octo-syllable verse, from which the early
French writers seldom deviated, is an allegorical vision, wherein, love
and the other passions or qualities connected with it pass over the
stage, without the intervention, I believe, of any less abstract
personages. Though similar allegories were not unknown to the ancients,
and, which is more to the purpose, maybe found in other productions of
the thirteenth century, none had been constructed so elaborately as
that of the Roman de la Rose. Cold and tedious as we now consider this
species of poetry, it originated in the creative power of imagination,
and appealed to more refined feeling than the common metrical narratives
could excite. This poem was highly popular in the middle ages, and
became the source of those numerous allegories which had not ceased in
the seventeenth century.

[Sidenote: Works in French prose.]

The French language was employed in prose as well as in metre. Indeed it
seems to have had almost an exclusive privilege in this respect. "The
language of Oil," says Dante, in his treatise on vulgar speech, "prefers
its claim to be ranked above those of Oc and Si (Provencal and Italian),
on the ground that all translations or compositions in prose have been
written therein, from its greater facility and grace, such as the books
compiled from the Trojan and Roman stories, the delightful fables about
Arthur, and many other works of history and science."[869] I have
mentioned already the sermons of St. Bernard and translations from
Scripture. The laws of the kingdom of Jerusalem purport to have been
drawn up immediately after the fir